The Weekend: A Novel

by Bernhard Schlink

  “If that’s how you see it all—where did you actually go wrong, as you say, where did you make mistakes?” His son asked his question coldly and calmly.

  “The victims. A struggle that doesn’t lead to success doesn’t justify victims.”

  “But if, with your actions, you had sparked the revolution in Germany or Europe or the world revolution, would the victims have been justified then?”

  “Of course they would have been justified if we had created a better, fairer world through revolution.”

  “The sacrifice of innocent people?”

  “The bad, unjust world we live in sacrifices innocent people too.”

  The son looked at his father, but said nothing more. He looked at him as if he were facing a monster with whom there could be no common ground.

  “Do you really mean the sacrifice of innocent people is never justified?!” Jörg said. “If the only way to kill Hitler had involved innocent people …”

  “That’s an exception. You’ve turned the exception into the rule.” Ferdinand turned to Eberhard, who was sitting next to him. “Would you pass me a roll, please?” He cut the roll open and beheaded an egg.

  Jörg shook his head, but said nothing more. Eberhard passed the rolls, Christiane handed around the plate of ham and Margarete the cheese board. When Dorle got up, picked up one coffeepot, went from seat to seat and poured, Ferdinand took the other one and did likewise. The conversation got under way, about the rain, the impending departure and journey home, the truth that makes you free and the freedom that makes things true, the changing times. Eberhard mentioned that, and although he didn’t say so, everyone knew he was talking about Jörg’s outmoded speech. “Even though they haven’t been contradicted, the subjects, problems and theses of another era are simply finished. They sound wrong; anyone who represents them isolates himself, anyone who represents them passionately looks ridiculous. When I started my studies, all that counted was existentialism, at the end of my studies everyone was keen on analytic philosophy, and twenty years ago Kant and Hegel came back. The problems of existentialism hadn’t been solved, nor had those of analytic philosophy. People were simply fed up with them.”

  Marko had listened attentively. “Because they haven’t been solved, they come back. The RAF will come back too. Not as it was back then. But it will come back, and because capitalism has become global, it will fight capitalism globally too—more consistently than it did back then. The fact that it is no longer chic to speak of oppression, alienation and disenfranchisement doesn’t mean they’ve gone away. In Asia young Muslims know what they have to fight against, and in Europe it’s the young guys in the French suburbs, and in the flat-lands of East Germany they don’t know it yet, but they feel it. It’s fermenting. If we all pull together …”

  “Our terrorists saw themselves as part of our society. It was their society too; they wanted to change it and thought it could be done only through violence. The Muslims don’t want to change our society, they want to destroy it. You can forget your great coalition of terrorists.” Andreas asked mockingly, “Or is your new RAF going to bomb its way to a theocratic state in our country?”

  Henner was lost in thoughts about his mother. Sometimes she terrorized him with her demands, her accusations, her complaining and nagging, her unerringly wounding remarks. She no longer played the game where you’re nice to others so that they will be nice to you. It wasn’t worth it for her anymore; why should she be nice today so that others would be nice to her tomorrow, when tomorrow she might be dead? Were real terrorists like that? Had they stopped playing according to the rules because they got nothing from following them? Because, if poor, they had no chance of success, and if rich, they experienced the game as mendacious, sordid, empty? He asked Margarete.

  “Women know that. They play according to the rules and achieve nothing, because the game is a men’s game and they’re women. Some say to themselves that in that case they won’t commit themselves to the rules. Others hope that, if they pay particularly faithful attention to the rules, they will one day be allowed to play on an equal footing with the men.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I’ve looked for a corner where I can play on my own. But I understand the women who don’t feel committed to the rules. I understand why so many of the terrorists were women.”

  “Could you …”

  “You mean, if I didn’t have my corner?” She laughed and took his hand. “I’d find myself another one!”

  She pressed his hand and threw him a glance that drew his attention to Jörg. He was sitting opposite them. After his little speech he had said nothing more, hadn’t eaten or drunk anything, had only stared straight ahead. He looked like someone who has done what had to be done, who is confident that it will have its effect, even if the effect will be a long time coming, who is at peace with himself, even if it isn’t easy. He looked not happy, but contented. That suited the group as little as his speech suited the times, and for the first time Margarete was seized with sympathy. Jörg was locked in his perceptions and ideas. He carried his cell with him—presumably he had done so long before he was put in a cell—and she couldn’t imagine how he would find his way out of it. She split a roll, put ham on one half and cheese on the other and set it on his plate. “Eat something, Jörg!”

  His eyes returned to the table and found hers. He smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Your coffee’s gone cold. I’ll get you a fresh one.”

  “Oh, no. Cold coffee makes you handsome—don’t you know that? It was often cold in prison.”

  “You’re not in prison anymore. And you’re handsome enough.”

  He smiled again, quite relaxed, grateful, trusting, as if she were tenderly spoiling him. “Yes, then thank you very much.”

  Margarete got up, picked up his cup, emptied it into the sink and waited as the water heated up and dripped through the filter. She heard the confusion of speaking, laughing voices at the breakfast table. Sometimes a loud word reached her: allotment, revolutionary somersault, damson cake, press declaration, and she wondered what they could be talking about. She was looking forward to the peace after the guests had left. Would Henner set off with the first or with the last or stay till evening? They had made no arrangements, no reunion out here, none in Berlin. For a whole night they had hugged each other and lain back to back and listened each to the other’s breathing. They had listened to each other, but asked almost no questions. So little had happened between them and at the same time so much that Margarete could imagine anything. She was quite calm.

  Thirty-seven

  When she set the coffee down in front of Jörg, his thoughts were elsewhere. “Really too much,” he said dismissively to Ulrich.

  But Ulrich insisted they fetch Christiane’s battery-powered radio and hear the broadcast of the President’s speech. “Don’t you remember how on New Year’s Eve we always used to watch Dinner for One and then the President’s speech? It was always a blast.”

  Andreas agreed. “You’ll be asked about the speech. It’s better that you know what’s in it.”

  So the radio was fetched and switched on. The speaker explained that when the President had agreed to deliver this year’s Berlin Cathedral speech, he had left the theme open. He wanted to talk about what people were preoccupied with at the time of the speech. Now the country knew, since a report in that morning’s Süddeutsche Zeitung that the President had pardoned a terrorist on Friday, and that the terrorist had replied with a declaration of war. It was well known that the pardoning of terrorists had been an intense preoccupation of the President’s over the past few months—it would come as no surprise if it was also the subject of the speech. At any rate leaving the subject open had been a brilliant idea on the part of the President or his spin doctor—the speaker stressed that the tension was great and the cathedral was full.

  Jörg looked at Marko, aghast. “You’ve published the declaration? The one you showed me yesterday and I still wanted time to t
hink about?”

  “Yes. I had it legally checked—it can’t do you any harm. Whether it matches your mood or meets your aesthetic demands or appeals to your sister—the revolution can’t take that into account. So stand by it. The alternative is that you will make yourself look ridiculous.” Marko, half serious, half joking, held his clenched fist aloft. “There’s nothing in the declaration that you haven’t said here this morning.”

  Jörg nodded wearily. Perhaps, he said to himself, Marko was right and the declaration was right and, as a consequence of what he had said that morning, necessary. But the right and the necessary can defeat you too. Everything had defeated him since he had been out of prison.

  The speaker had faded at the end of a concluding chorale, followed by the bishop’s greeting to the President. Then the President spoke.

  He talked about terrorism in Germany from the seventies through the nineties, about the perpetrators and the victims, about the challenge to and preservation of the liberal state of law, about the obligation to respect and protect human dignity. This obligation made the state come down hard on those who attacked its citizens. But it also made it strong enough to remain measured in the defense of its order and, if no further danger existed, to end the struggle. The final goal was always the establishment of peace and reconciliation. There had been three terrorists still in prison. He had pardoned them all. He had wanted to give a sign that German terrorism and the tensions and fractures in society that it had provoked were past. We faced new threats, terrorist threats included, which we wanted to meet in a peaceful and reconciled state.

  “I have dealt with and—as the media have reported—also met each individual. All three have put their pasts behind them. Putting the past behind one, if life consists only of that past and prison, isn’t easy, and it isn’t going to be easy for these three. Yesterday one of them issued a declaration, from which we shall read today. I see in it a man’s attempt to put the past behind him, and at the same time to preserve it in his own biography. I regret the declaration. But I understand why someone without much time left to give his life a new meaning should make this desperate, contradictory attempt, just as he was torn between pleading for mercy and rebellious defiance.”

  The President paused briefly. People in the audience could be heard fidgeting, shifting, getting up and leaving. The President went on, turned to the relatives of the victims, acknowledged their desire for the whole truth and a sign of remorse or shame, and again deplored Jörg’s declaration on their behalf. He thanked the congregation for allowing him to say what he had to say in the cathedral—it had been a good place for it.

  The announcer informed the audience they had just heard the President, he had been giving this year’s Berlin Cathedral speech, he had disclosed the pardoning of the last imprisoned terrorists. The announcer said there would shortly be a talk show about the President’s speech and named the time and the participants: the daughter of a victim, a terrorist who had given himself up and been released long ago, a journalist who had made German terrorism the theme of his life, the minister of justice and the host. Then the announcer handed over to his colleagues in Wimbledon.

  Thirty-eight

  Ulrich turned the radio off. No one said anything. During the speech Jörg had pushed his chair back and first crossed his legs, then sat them side by side and propped his elbows on his knees and laid his head in his hands. Now he had to move, brought his chair to the table, tried to pour himself some coffee but couldn’t do it. His hand was shaking. Christiane got to her feet, poured him a cup and put her other hand on his shoulder. “I asked him not to talk about it, and thought …” Jörg spoke quietly and as if he were close to tears.

  Andreas said, “With your declaration you left him no other way out. How is the President to explain that he has pardoned a terrorist whose first act is to declare war on the state, if not like that? Is what he said true?”

  “Of course not,” Marko cut in. “The President just wanted to play down Jörg’s declaration. Because they’re afraid of Jörg, they turn him into a helpless, contradictory joke figure. But the comrades understand what’s going on here, and it really couldn’t have gone any better …”

  “Stop your stupid chattering. Is it true, Jörg?”

  “I …”

  “Stop your idiotic interrogation,” said Christiane. “You aren’t his friend, as I thought, you’re just his lawyer, and …”

  “Leave it, Christiane. Yes, I don’t have much time left. I’ve got cancer, discovered too late, bad operation, bad radiation therapy, or else so late that there was nothing to be done, and now I’ve got metastases.”

  “Why didn’t I know anything about that?” Christiane replied.

  Jörg laughed contemptuously. “Prostate cancer. I can’t get it up anymore, I can’t keep my water in—am I supposed to tell a woman about that? Yes, you’re my sister, but …” He made a face and shook his head. “OK, Dorle? You couldn’t have chosen a worse one. I didn’t want to tell you—now everyone knows. What else do you want to know? Whether I was, as he put it, ‘torn between pleading for mercy and rebellious defiance’? Yes, I was. I wanted to live again before the cancer devoured me, even if there wasn’t much left of my life. Smelling the forest and the wet dust when it rains in the city after a run of hot days, driving on little French country roads with the sunroof and the windows open, going to the cinema, eating pasta and drinking red wine with friends.” He smiled with resignation at the others. “I hadn’t imagined it would be so difficult. And Marko seduced me into thinking I could play a part again and everything I had done, outside and in, would not be for nothing. I’m not accusing you of anything, Marko—you didn’t put the idea into my head; I thought it myself. In my request for a pardon I still showed restraint. When I had my conversation with the President … I’d just had the diagnosis with the metastases, and he said, It’ll go no further, and then out it came. I should have been killed in a shootout twenty-five years ago.”

  Christiane was still standing next to him, her hand on his shoulder. “To make sure that didn’t happen, I betrayed you back then. I couldn’t stand feeling so anxious about you. I thought, I didn’t bring you up to be shot by the police. And one day you will even be happy still to be alive. And now if you aren’t—I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything, about betraying you back then, and about the fact that I’d do it again, and that you have cancer and don’t want to live anymore and that this weekend has become so difficult.” She was crying.

  Karin wanted to stand up, but her husband held her tight. It was quiet in the room; the rain rustled outside. Jörg looked up. The tears ran down his sister’s face and dripped from her chin to the floor. Her shoulders shook—everything was terrible, everything was hopeless. He put his head on her hand.

  When he got up again, he asked Ulrich, “Does your offer still hold? Can I start in one of your labs?”

  “Whenever you like.”

  “Where are your labs?”

  “Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg—you remember the pub where we used to play cards, before you abandoned such profane things? That’s one of my labs now too.”

  “You see, I’d even forgotten that I used to play cards. But I like going back to where it all began. I can’t go under your wing, Tia. I wouldn’t do you any good, or you me. Visiting and holidays, that’s different. But in the same flat, over breakfast at the kitchen table in the morning, in the evening on the sofa in front of the television, my diapers in the bathroom—we can’t have that.”

  Christiane nodded. She was too relieved to be able to contradict him. She sniffed, wiped away her tears and started clearing away the plates and cutlery.

  “Sit down.” Margarete rested her hand on her arm, and Christiane sat down. “The cellar is full of water. It’ll have to be bailed out, and I’d be happy if you could all help me. The fire department has its hands full with schools and hospitals and government offices—we know that already. I think the rain will stop in an hour—
shall we meet then?”

  The sky was as gloomy and the rain as steady as it had been in the morning and the evening before. Ulrich, who wanted to know everything, wanted to know that too. “Of course we’ll help, but what makes you think the rain’s about to stop?”

  “You hear the birds? They start when the rain’s about to stop. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is.”

  They listened to the sounds outside, and amid the rustle of the rain they heard the singing and twittering and chattering of the birds.

  Thirty-nine

  When the plates and cutlery had been cleared away and washed, Jörg went in search of his son. He didn’t find him in the house, and when he asked Margarete if there was a place in the garden sheltered from the rain, she told him how to get to the greenhouse. It was broken and should have been torn down, but part of the glass roof was still intact, and she sometimes sat under it in the rain on an overturned bathtub.

  Margarete was right—the rain was easing off. But Jörg had forgotten the directions she had given him as soon as she had finished speaking. He went on searching and was soaked by the time he reached the greenhouse and finally found his son. He sat down silently next to him and was glad for the time being that his son didn’t get up and go. He shivered, and he would have liked to warm himself up by beating his chest and sides with his arms. But he didn’t want to risk repelling his son and driving him away. So he sat still and saw the rain getting weaker and weaker. Then he said: “I really did write you lots of letters.”